November 13, 2012

• Orchestra: The Family Con

  I realize that I haven't written much lately.  It seems like there are always reasons why I can't seem to write whether it is the time or just that the phone line doesn't work...there is always something.  

  In not writing for a while I realize a big part of what has been happening lately in my life has gone on simply unmentioned.  Sure I keep up on Facebook, but I fall so far behind on Xanga.

  Here is the scoop.

  At the very end of August, I checked out on orchestra that is located in the next big city south of where I live.  It was an amateur orchestra that I might be able to join.  After about a month's worth of deliberating, I decided to join the group officially.  

  I play the viola.  I started playing the viola the summer between my 4th and 5th grade year of elementary school.  I got asked over the weekend by an orchestra member if I started out on the viola, and the answer is (unless you count the flutophone), yes, I started out on the viola.  I realized that in my answer it seemed odd to the hearer that I have never played anything but the viola.  Really, the viola?  Who just wakes up one day and says, "I'll play the viola!"  And I know there may be some out there who are wondering what a viola is in the first place.  

  Viola
  It is a member of the string family that is lower in pitch and slightly larger in size then the size of a violin. It is higher pitched than the cello and much smaller than the cello.  It is held in the same way a violin is.  Violas read their music in alto clef.  This makes violas in a league all their own.  Yes, please commence the viola jokes now....

  What drew me to the viola?
  I liked the tone of the instrument.  It many ways it just simply pleased my ears.  The violin is to high pitched for my strange ears, and playing anything larger than the viola just looked mendokusai (like it would be troubling or burdensome) to me.  I always liked the idea of playing a stringed instrument and have generally felt that blowing and or spitting into instruments is absurd.  Please note!  To all the winds and brass players, I mean you no ill will, they just don't interest me.  Percussion is also not really my thing either.  My elementary school brought musical instruments to our school and people played them so we could hear how they sounded.  I heard the viola and I knew it was the one for me.  Do you have to be weird to play viola?  I suppose you can draw your own conclusions on that one.  I don't think that is really for me to say.

  At any rate, the past weekend the group I am a part of held a family concert.  The group is called the Nagaoka Symphony Orchestra.  Officially, there are two violas in our group.  Because we are not a particularly large group as a whole, we borrowed some help from the big city to the North of us.  This filled out the whole orchestra and made the violas swell to 7.  The first half of the concert were more classical numbers that included Pachelbel's Canon in D and the Sabre Dance by Aram Khachaturian.  I am sure you would know the songs if you heard them even if you do not recognize their names.  We also played some Wagner and Handel.  The second half of the concert was more popular songs.  We played the theme to the Thunderbirds Anime and a medley of Disney songs.  I am sure that these might sound familiar, but the bulk of the songs were squarely rooted in Japanese culture.  It is possible that some of you would recognize the Miyazaki movie songs like The Naushika Requiem and a song from the Laputa movie called Kimiwo Nosete.  I personally only know the Miyazaki songs because I live with a Miyazaki fan.  To my daughter's absolute delight, we played the Anpanman March.  She was over the top excited about this song.  I have written about the Anpanman cartoons before here on this blog, but I neglected to tag those posts and would have a time trying to find them again.  We also did some music from an anime call Space Battleship Yamato which came out in the 70's but turned live action movie a few summers ago.  I watched the movie to get my bearings on the songs, but scifi is not my thing....let alone Japanese scifi.  We rounded out the concert with some themes from some Samurai dramas.  I have to use the words some, because I really do not know the dramas they belong to because I simply do not watch samurai dramas.  Samurai dramas are known as old man shows and the only one whom I personally know who likes them is my son Tomo.  He has an old man's soul and he's super cool that way.

  The weekend was very tiring as we had a lot of last minute rehearsals, but it was so much fun.  Was I nervous?  No way!  I was just enjoying being up on the stage and playing music with a group.  I enjoyed that team play aspect of being a viola.  We seldom hold a melody, but without us the fabric of the song just sounds a little bare.  You don't notice us, but you would miss us if we weren't there.  Just how we violas roll.

  • 2:05 am
  • 1 Comment